Businessweek Archives

Solving A Labor Market Enigma

November 07, 1999

Economic Trends

Solving a Labor Market Enigma

Are we running out of workers?

No one denies that U.S. labor markets today are tight. But just how tight are they? Those who worry about inflation point to the government's survey of payroll employment, which has registered more than 1.5 million additional jobs since January. With a 4.2% jobless rate and scant labor-force growth, that suggests the economy could soon be running out of workers.

As L. Douglas Lee of Economics From Washington observes, however, the government's other employment measure, its survey of households, tells quite a different story. It shows a mere 154,000 people added to job rolls since January--suggesting that slowing employment growth may well keep wage pressures from erupting.

Which picture is correct? Most experts favor the payroll survey because it is based on business records and uses a larger sample. Moreover, the two estimates of job growth often diverge because of differences in coverage. The household survey includes such groups as farm workers and the self-employed, for example, whereas the payroll survey counts jobs rather than people employed--so its numbers are inflated by those holding multiple jobs.

Still, in terms of growth rates and the numbers added to job rolls, the two measures have tended to track together over time--until the mid-1990s. According to a new study by Mark Schweitzer and Jennifer Ransom of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, even after adjusting for the differences in coverage, a widening gap between the employment growth rates--amounting to several million workers--has surfaced in recent years.

The two researchers can't explain this growing disparity, but they note that the payroll survey numbers imply a far lower jobless rate than today's 4.2%. By contrast, the household survey's more moderate estimate of job gains implies greater productivity growth and less labor-market tightness.

Another strong possibility, observes Lee, is that the household survey has been understating both job growth and labor-force growth in recent years because it is keyed to available population data and thus missed increases in the employment of illegal aliens. After the 1990 census, he notes, some 1 million people were added to the household survey's job count.

The notion that population estimates may be too low also intrigues some government experts. That explanation would close the puzzling gap between the household and payroll surveys' job counts and would probably leave the jobless rate close to its present level. But it would allay fears that unemployment is a lot lower than reported--and would help explain why labor costs have stayed relatively restrained.By Gene KoretzReturn to top

Return to top

Uncle Sam's Key Role in Science

A catalyst for private investment

If scientific progress is a critical source of America's economic growth, what role should government funding play in basic research? Economists are of several minds on the subject.

Many regard such funding as crucial, because basic research tends to be neglected by private investors with more immediate commercial objectives. Others claim government funding is often wasteful and tends to crowd out more efficient private funding. Cutbacks in federal support, they say, would be partly offset by increased outlays from business and other sectors.

A study by economist Arthur M. Diamond Jr. of the University of Nebraska casts doubt on the latter view. Diamond analyzed the impact of federal funding for basic scientific research on similar outlays by universities, foundations, and industry from 1953 to 1995. In line with past research on the effect of government funding on other activities, he expected to find that pickups in government spending tended to reduce science funding by others.

Instead, Diamond found that government science support actually tended to "crowd in" funding from private sources. Each $1 million increase in federal spending (in 1992 dollars) over the 43-year period, he reports, boosted academic and foundation outlays by $80,000 and $36,000, respectively. More important, it resulted in a hefty $620,000 increase in industry outlays.

Diamond's study doesn't explain the strong correlation between federal and business science funding. But one possibility, he says, may be that companies find it profitable to enhance their basic scientific capacity in order to exploit the findings of government-sponsored research.By Gene KoretzReturn to top